


Emotional Honesty in 'Sherlock'

by SweetLateJuliet



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Meta, Season/Series 03
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-30
Updated: 2014-06-01
Packaged: 2018-01-27 03:11:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1712792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SweetLateJuliet/pseuds/SweetLateJuliet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>My highest wish for <i>Sherlock</i> is emotional honesty - to be able to understand and believe the performances I see onscreen. Thoughts on getting what I want.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Don't Break the Performances (Pretty Please?)

My highest wish for _Sherlock_ is emotional honesty - to be able to understand and believe the performances I see onscreen. I don’t want Sherlock’s rooftop turmoil or Mary’s good-natured camaraderie to be given the lie by the plot.

No guarantees I’ll get what I want, natch. But here are some thoughts about if I did. It’d involve going back to the rooftop one more time.

~~~

Suppose you were making a TV show and you somehow got these people as your stars:

Amanda “Performance That Launched a Thousand (Battle)Ships” Abbington

Martin “I’ll Just Do This Paragraph with a Look” Freeman

Benedict “Thaumaturgy Chameleon” Cumberbatch

If I ran the circus, I wouldn’t use their incredible talents to create powerful emotional impressions in one episode, then tie up plot threads in another by asking you to believe it was actually the _characters_ who had been acting, running a long and complex con on each other and the audience. That’s a waste of some brilliant performances.

(But _Moffat,_ you say! Eh. I have hope.)

[finalproblem](http://finalproblem.tumblr.com/)’s rule for a [successful plot twist](http://finalproblem.tumblr.com/post/74801380055/mike-sherl-take-on-the-world-and-save-everyone-by) is Don’t Break the Story:

> A twist should make you look at what already happened in a new light. It shouldn’t make the things that already happened not make sense anymore. That’s not a twist. That’s just trying to get cheap shock value by cheating.

For me, Don’t Break the Performances is just as important.

**In S3, I saw* pair-wise love and friendship between Sherlock, John, and Mary, both before _and after_ the shooting.**

(*This is what I saw. Not everybody will agree, especially with respect to Mary in HLV. That’s cool. This is just what I think.)

This love and friendship wasn’t all well-explained by the narrative (Why would Sherlock still like and trust Mary after she shot him? How did John decide to reconcile with her? We haven’t been told yet.), but neither was it confirmed by the narrative to be false (e.g., with a scene of Sherlock and John conspiring against Mary, or a secret devious smile from Mary at Christmas or on the tarmac).

Some possible “plot fixes” for S3 rely on these characters faking some of this love and friendship, and the consequent fear, uncertainty, gratitude, regret, etc., that looked genuine (if confusing) to me. These include:

~Mary’s faking the pregnancy.

~Sherlock and John were working together to con Mary since the Leinster Gardens confrontation.

~Mary never loved John. She just wants to hurt him and Sherlock.

If the showrunners ask me to believe any of these performance-breaking, haHA!-it-was-all-an-act explanations later, lots of S3 becomes emotionally empty. That could happen. But I wouldn’t _like_ it, so I’m considering the alternatives.


	2. Character Actors, Not Actor Characters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hypothesis: When the characters act, we'll usually be able to tell.

Hypothesis: Sherlock, John, and Mary don’t hold a thespian candle to Benedict, Martin and Amanda. When the  _characters_ act, we’ll be usually be able to tell.

**John**

John might rival Arthur Shappey for Least Likely to Successfully Lie to Anybody Ever. He impersonates a reporter to Kenny Prince (TGG) and a friend of Henry Knight’s to Dr Mortimer (THoB), and he’s ill-at-ease in both situations. I can’t think of a time that he’s shown really trying to deceive Sherlock or anyone else close to him (Mary, Lestrade, Mrs Hudson).

The closest John comes to lying is when he pretends things are all fine, as when Greg gives him the DVD of Sherlock’s full birthday message in MHR, then worries whether he should’ve.

> _“Don’t worry. It’s okay. Probably won’t even watch it.”_

About “These are prepared words, Mary”: One interpretation is that this is John providing plausible deniability for the lie he’s about to recite at Christmas. Maybe. But this could also be how a master of emotional constipation is able to say heartfelt things about his relationship.

**Sherlock**

Sherlock is a fine actor but he drops the facade as soon as no one’s looking.

If he didn’t really trust Mary after the Watsons’ domestic, I might expect to see this mask-dropping around her later, but I didn’t. (*See note below.)

**Mary**

Mary is a pro at lying by omission and using others’ assumptions to her advantage, and as an intelligence agent I imagine she’s good at putting on a facade. Ordinary!nurse!Mary is certainly an act, one that biblioaesthetica noticed her [dropping](http://biblioaesthetica.tumblr.com/post/79355752241/it-just-hit-me-that-mary-comes-the-closest-to) outside the drug den in HLV.

We definitely see her acting when she meets John at the hospital:

Just like Sherlock, she stopped performing when her audience couldn’t see.

I didn’t see a repeat of the mask-dropping after this hospital scene,* so one way of interpreting her subsequent behavior is that she’s not trying to deceive John and Sherlock any more. She’s not exactly spilling her guts, either; she gives John the option of learning from the USB drive but doesn’t volunteer her story. But in this reading she’s no longer  _acting._

*After Mary and Sherlock embrace on the tarmac at the end of the episode, both of their expressions change as Mary turns away.

This might be mask-dropping. However, Mary is turning  _toward_ John at this point, an odd time to drop a facade, and she maintained her fond expression during the hug when John and Sherlock  _couldn’t_ see her. That’s when she did “drop her mask” when hugging John at the hospital. I read the changing expressions here as both Mary and Sherlock understanding that the “easy” goodbye is over and the heart-breaking one is imminent.

**What Seems True?**

If Sherlock, John and Mary  _aren’t_ trying to deceive each other throughout S3, and even less so after the shooting and the induced confession at Leinster Gardens, what looks true to me based on the emotions I saw?

~Mary loves John.

~She’s really pregnant. If the baby [isn’t John’s](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1260208), that was an accident rather than malice.

~John loves Mary.

~He's conflicted because he loves Sherlock too, but has already committed himself to Mary when Sherlock returns.

~Sherlock likes Mary.

~Mary likes Sherlock.

~Sherlock was sure Mary - “Mrs Watson” - wouldn’t shoot him.

~She was sorry that she (felt she) had to.

~The confrontations at Leinster Gardens and Baker Street somehow made Sherlock trust her again.

~John recommitted himself to Mary and his marriage at Christmas.

~Mary was moved and overjoyed to be "taken back."

~Sherlock believed Mary would take care of John, and that he wouldn't see John again after he boarded the plane.

(Again: These are the moments that looked genuine, if confusing, to _me_. YMMV.)  


If the showrunners don’t break those performances, how could they simultaneously not break the plot?


	3. Assumptions and Interruptions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Avoiding emotional dishonesty isn’t the same as believing that we already know the whole story, or that characters always tell the whole truth. How might we get Jossed about _His Last Vow_ without breaking the story or the performances?

Avoiding emotional dishonesty isn’t the same as believing that we already know the whole story, or that characters always tell the whole truth.  _Sherlock_ ’s showrunners can guide us into certain assumptions that they’ll Joss later  _without_ making the protagonists actively deceive each other.

Here are some situations that we might interpret one way now because of (very reasonable) assumptions, but might understand another way if new information comes to light.

Note: I’m not trying to  _prove_ anything plot-related about future series. I’m just presenting ideas about ways TPTB - and my fellow fic writers - could fill things that I see as plot holes while still leaving both the plot and the performances unbroken. Speculation ahoy!

**The CAM Confrontation**

_**It looks like:** _

Mary was trying to extract documentation of her spy past from CAM so that she could hide it from John. Sherlock was surprised to find Mary there because he’d missed or willfully ignored all the signs about her past. Mary shot Sherlock in an attempt to continue hiding her spy past from John.

**_What’s an assumption?_ **

CAM knew about Mary’s spy past,  _rather than some other secret_.

Mary was threatening CAM  _to hide this spy past from John._

Sherlock was surprised to see Mary  _because_ he didn’t know about this past.

She shot Sherlock because of the threat  _from Sherlock_.

> MAGNUSSEN: What-what-what would your husband think, eh? He ... your lovely husband, upright, honourable... so English. What-what would he say to you now? … You’re-you’re doing this to protect him from the truth ... but is this protection he would want?

([x](http://arianedevere.livejournal.com/67635.html))  


Is there anything particularly dishonorable or “un-English” in having, or being deceived by, an assassin spouse?

What are other stories that touch on John, Mary, honor, and Britishness?

_**Alternate emotionally honest possibilities** _

(Again: This is speculation bounded by Don’t Break the Story, Don’t Break the Performances. Plot bunnies yes, attempted proof no.)

Mary might have been bargaining with CAM as well as threatening him. Perhaps she offered him leverage over her (the not-John paternity of her child? something she showed him on the phone) to make herself the start of the pressure-point chain rather than John. 

Mary could have been protecting John from something other than knowledge of her past (e.g., trying to save him from another bonfire). And/or, Mary could have been protecting someone  _else_ , like a deeply important [person from her AGRA past](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1260247), with or without CAM understanding these motives.

Sherlock might have previously made deductions about Mary’s past and discussed them with Mycroft, who had intelligence-community information on her. Mycroft could have told Sherlock enough to reassure him. Sherlock might have been surprised to see Mary in CAM’s office since he assumed it was Lady Smallwood, but  _not_ to see Mary as a spy.

Mary might have thought it necessary to control the interaction with CAM - to not have CAM and Sherlock talk, and certainly not have CAM and John talk - until she knew CAM would act as she wanted. She could have shot Sherlock to maintain this control, and to convince CAM that she was serious and a threat to him. (Based on his [expression](http://penns-woods.tumblr.com/post/79448726463/cosmoglaut-porcupine-girl-cosmoglaut), it worked!)

**The Baker Street Discussion**

Excerpts from Ariane’s [transcript](http://arianedevere.livejournal.com/68242.html):

> MARY: How much d’you know already?
> 
> SHERLOCK  _(still speaking more quietly than we’re used to)_ : By your skill set, you are – or  were – an intelligence agent. Your accent is currently English but I suspect you are not. You’re on the run from something; you’ve used your skills to disappear; ...
> 
> _(John shakes his head as if he can’t believe what he’s hearing.)_
> 
> SHERLOCK: ... Magnussen knows your secret, which is why you were going to kill him; and I assume you befriended Janine ...  _(he grimaces, shifting uncomfortably on his chair)_ ... in order to get close to him.

...

> MARY: The stuff Magnussen has on me, I would go to prison for the rest of my life.
> 
> JOHN: So you were just gonna kill him.
> 
> MARY: People like Magnussen  should be killed. That’s why there are people like me.
> 
> JOHN  _(lifting his left hand and gently punching the arm of the chair)_ : Perfect(!) So that’s what you were? An assassin?
> 
> _(He looks towards Sherlock.)_
> 
> JOHN: How could I  not see that?
> 
> _(He turns back towards Mary.)_
> 
> MARY: You  did see that.

_**It looks like:** _

Mary was a spy and assassin. Magnussen later suggests that she went rogue (“bad girl”).

_**Alternate emotionally honest possibilities** _

Mary is a former intelligence agent on the run, but perhaps she went rogue for “good” reasons rather than “bad” ones. (Moriarty’s snipers are morally different from a James Bond or a Jason Bourne seeking just vengeance, aren’t they?) Her history could be more complex and sympathetic than “I killed innocent people for money.”

> SHERLOCK  _(to Mary)_ : Have I missed anything?
> 
> JOHN: How did she save your life?

Sherlock asks Mary if he’s missed anything, and John interrupts with a redirecting question.

We  _know_ the in-show answer to Sherlock’s question:  _There’s always something._ But Mary isn’t given, or doesn’t take, the opportunity to say what that is. So what did Sherlock miss?

**The Restaurant**

When invalid Sherlock meets CAM for lunch, Sherlock tries on CAM’s glasses and seems confused that they’re ordinary spectacles. We (and I think CAM) assume that Sherlock is way off his game, possibly because of the morphine.

_**Alternate emotionally honest possibilities** _

Maybe Sherlock already suspects a mind palace. (As Sherlock returns to life in the operating room, a few of the frames we see are of CAM at Baker Street  _without_ his glasses:

This might suggest that this image was meaningful to Sherlock even then.)

He could be deliberately misleading CAM about this suspicion while [confirming](http://sweetlatejuliet.tumblr.com/post/79114024674/critical-confirmations) that there’s nothing special about the glasses.

**The Months of Silence**

The televisual convention is that time and events not shown onscreen aren’t important to the narrative. That may be an improper assumption in this case.

Did Mary and John talk superficially, but stay silent about the important things? Did Sherlock and John discuss Mary? (Relationship talk? That’d be novel for them.) Did Sherlock and Mary discuss John?

There’s a lot of room to speculate, and not much to go on.

**Christmas Reunion**

> MARY: So you realise that, er, Sherlock got us out here to see his mum and dad for a reason?
> 
> JOHN  _(smiling)_ : His lovely mum and dad. A fine example of married life. I get that.

John assumes he knows what Mary’s suggesting; Mary passes out before she can respond. I bet you one large eyeball tea that’s not what she meant.

Maybe she has opinions on “giving it all up” for children, or perhaps she knows more about the elder Holmes’ careers than we do; in either case, she may be suggesting that Sherlock was pushing John and Mary into confronting those topics.

**The Vaults**

Sherlock looks sick as CAM “opens” his vaults. The assumption is that Sherlock is realizing how wrong he was and how colossally his plan to set CAM up will fail.

But if Sherlock understood CAM more than he let on - if he suspected a mind palace - this dismay could be the death of his last hope that there was a way to destroy “the vaults” other than murdering CAM.


	4. The Fall: Just a Magic Trick?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock told John, "It's a trick. Just a magic trick." But we know that's not true - Sherlock's _not_ a fake. What if _none_ of it was a magic trick?

> _It’s a trick. Just a magic trick._
> 
> _No. All right, stop it now._

John knows, and we know, that what Sherlock said just before he stepped off the Bart’s roof wasn’t true: He didn’t invent Moriarty, he’s not a fake, he is that clever. It’s not a magic trick.

**What if _none_ of it was a magic trick?**

Last hiatus, we devised elaborate ways that Sherlock could have faked his suicide. The explanation we got in S3 wasn’t totally satisfactory. I loved TEH’s three versions of the Fall because they were fun, silly, and kissy (!), but I think Lazarus is a lie. (See [finalproblem](http://finalproblem.tumblr.com/tagged/the-empty-fall) for discussion.)

This hiatus, we’re working on cunning ways that Moriarty could have faked his suicide too. And hey, maybe. TPTB might still have his-and-his magic-trick rooftop solutions up their sleeves that Don’t Break the Story. (Though the more people that were involved - especially anyone from Sherlock’s freelance Homeless Network - the harder it would’ve been to keep the secrets for two years.)

But  _any_ solution where Sherlock and Moriarty faked suicide at each other does “break the performances.”

Some of the exquisitely acted emotions and moments I saw at the end of TRF were:

Realization

Fatalism and grief

Boredom and weary disgust

Dawning hope

Ecstatic relief

Surprise

Disbelief

Panic

Pain

Grim resolve

(John did some awesome emoting here too, but we’re not generally questioning whether his  _character_ was acting at the time.)

**If the show goes for emotional honesty rather than Mission Impossible-style deceptions and triple-crosses, the big twist could be that _neither_ Sherlock nor Jim faked their suicides.**

Through that lens:

Jim’s struggle against the tedium of “stayin’ alive” was real. The immense anticlimax of beating his one worthy opponent exhausted his motivation to continue, and he embraced the solution to the Final Problem for himself and Sherlock. He really won, he really shot himself, and he’s really dead.

Sherlock realized what the Final Problem was as he left Kitty Riley’s flat, and he knew John was his pressure point; Moriarty would use John to force his hand. The only ways to protect John were to learn the extent of Moriarty’s plan and thwart it in time ( _improbable_ ) - or die.

Sherlock enlisted Molly’s help. If he thought he had a good chance of beating Moriarty, the emotion of this scene, in which they _both tear up_ , is overwrought on his part and cheapened on hers:

> SHERLOCK: You’re wrong, you know.
> 
> _(She gasps and jumps, spinning around towards him.)_
> 
> SHERLOCK: You  _do_ count. You’ve  _always_ counted and I’ve always trusted you.
> 
> _(He turns his head towards her.)_
> 
> SHERLOCK: But you  _were_ right. I’m not okay.
> 
> MOLLY: Tell me what’s wrong.
> 
> SHERLOCK _(slowly walking towards her)_ : Molly, I think I’m going to die.
> 
> MOLLY: What do you need?
> 
> SHERLOCK _(still slowly approaching her)_ : If I wasn’t everything that you think I am – everything that  _I_ think I am – would you still want to help me?
> 
> _(Molly gazes up at him as he stops close to her.)_
> 
> MOLLY: What do you need?
> 
> _(Sherlock steps even closer, his expression intense.)_
> 
> SHERLOCK: You.

([x](http://arianedevere.livejournal.com/31483.html))  


But if Sherlock thinks Moriarty outmaneuvered him and he’s likely to die soon, it’s a touching, desperate, and humble acknowledgment of his own fallibility and a plea for help to a true friend he’s repeatedly taken for granted.

Perhaps Sherlock already knows that the average arrival time for a London ambulance is eight minutes.

To help his chances with Moriarty, he chooses a rooftop near an ambulance station for the confrontation, and Molly calls 999 just a bit sooner than anyone else.

(Total speculation: Molly could have been watching out a window, reading the situation by watching John on the street.  _Stay exactly where you are, John._ )

On the vanishingly slim chance that Sherlock survives, perhaps Molly has been instructed to contact Mycroft for guidance.

Maybe Sherlock found some whisper-of-a-prayer protective gear for his torso; that would fit with the untucked shirt and brown straps we saw during the Fall, and he could have plausibly found something like that in the little time he had between when he understood Jim’s plan and when they met on the roof.

For a last sliver of hope, he made Moriarty [confirm](http://sweetlatejuliet.tumblr.com/post/79114024674/critical-confirmations) that Molly and Mycroft weren’t being watched and would be safe if they secretly helped him.

But basically, in an emotionally honest reading of TRF, Sherlock jumped with no expectation of surviving.

**Holmes’ Explanation in “The Empty House”**

This version of Sherlock’s fall has a nice resonance with ACD canon, in which Holmes was prepared to die with Moriarty in the Reichenbach Falls (“My note to you [Watson] was absolutely genuine” [EMPT]), but Moriarty just happened to fall alone - to die first.

In “The Empty House,” Holmes explains that he seized the opportunity to be thought dead so he could draw out the “at least three others whose desire for vengeance upon me would only be increased by the death of their leader.” Holmes hid on a ledge above the path while Watson and company made their erroneous conclusions about Holmes and Moriarty going into the falls together. After they left, Holmes nearly died scrambling down from the ledge as Moriarty’s confederate (Moran) rained boulders down on him.

In BBC _Sherlock_ , the “at least three others” who wanted Sherlock dead could be Moriarty’s snipers. The threat from them wasn’t neutralized by Moriarty’s death, so Sherlock had to jump to spare his friends even after Moriarty “went over the falls.” In this reading, Sherlock’s metaphorical ledge was Molly and perhaps a vest around his torso.

> But I struggled upwards, and at last I reached a ledge several feet deep and covered with soft green moss, where I could lie unseen in the most perfect comfort. There I was stretched when you, my dear Watson, and all your following were investigating in the most sympathetic and inefficient manner the circumstances of my death.
> 
> ... by the blessing of God I landed, torn and bleeding, upon the path.

(EMPT)

~~~

Potential difficulty: We do see Sherlock at the graveyard later, and he doesn’t  _look_ worse for the wear. But all we see in that shot is his face in closeup (with hair covering a part of his forehead that had been especially bloody) and the motion of one step out of the frame.

Further, it’s unclear how much time has elapsed between the Fall and this scene. It’s at least long enough for Sherlock to be “buried” and John to make and attend an appointment with his therapist. The mental gymnastics needed to consider that in this scene Sherlock may be recovering from a fairly recent fall aren’t that difficult for me; YMMV.

(Disclaimer: “Ridiculous risk, miraculous survival” is a premise I used in my own post-Reichenbach [fic](http://archiveofourown.org/works/784488), so I’m surely inordinately partial to it. I used it there partly because I didn’t want to try to out-clever the showrunners by making up my own sensible solution to Fall, but mostly because “how he did it” wasn’t the point of what I was writing. Like John in TEH, I didn’t really care about the “how” - I cared about the reunion and the emotions. It only recently seemed possible that the showrunners might be thinking this way too.)


End file.
